The Corner In The Middle

As you know, I have a crappy hardware store job so I can pay for things my school money doesn’t, like family medical bills, eye doctors visits, dentist, gas, food, ect…   Well, I am a big proponent of recommending the eco-friendly, plant derived, and kid/animal friendly products we have in stock in favor of highly marketed commercial chemical based alternatives.  I had a discussion with a coworker about my preferences, as we were discussing genetically modified plants and how I feel about recommending organic seeds from our display instead of the hybrid versions.  She stated that even though I may prefer to market those products based on my personal beliefs, that work is not the place, and while I’m on the clock, maybe it’s not the time for me to recommend people be eco responsible.  She tole me it was irresponsible of me to show consumers that we sell eco friendly and human/animal safe products that work just as well as the chemical based and dangerous products they are asking for, because they are cheaper and have been around for a long time. 

I thought to myself, interesting, I am not supposed to market specific eco/organic based products we sell, because giant chemical companies would lose the profit and a small eco company would gain, and what would we do if we couldn’t get chemical based weed killer anymore?   This is the problem dear readers.  Companies tell us how they want us to be responsible, how they support our choice to become more ecofriendly and want to provide us with the products to do so, but I’m in the shade if I actually refer people to them because, if consumers are unfamiliar with the product, by explaining the benefits of it versus the harmful to children/pets/drinking water-chemical alternative, I am wasting corporate dollars?  A sale is a sale, a responsible sale is a better sale, and frankly, if I can’t market our products when consumers ask for a recommendation, who are they supposed to get the recommendation from? 

I get to work for a company that is not eco friendly and force it to be.  That’s how you change things dear readers, not by violence, not by joining the “group” on social networking sites, not by writing a letter to the invisible person that is the corporation, you have to manipulate it from the inside.  I get to force the company to be responsible by acting for it.  Like, well, an agency relationship.    Needless to say, I took her comments and beliefs and swallowed them with a razor blade, but in conclusion, I kept the pain to myself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 4:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.